


Aches and Pains

by amyfortuna



Category: Outcast - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Canon Compliant, Conversations, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-03
Updated: 2013-06-03
Packaged: 2017-12-13 21:23:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/829036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyfortuna/pseuds/amyfortuna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Justinius helps Beric ease the pain of old memories and move forward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aches and Pains

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fawatson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fawatson/gifts).



Beric stayed. 

It was in his heart to join the Eagles, to make good on the dream he had dreamed so many years ago, but all that was in his heart from those days could not compare with the call of his belonging-place, the marshland, the wide grey sky and the crying geese overhead. If he were in the Eagles, he might be sent anywhere, but the only place he really wanted to be was here. 

So Beric stayed, and the days passed as the Wall lengthened and grew stronger. He grew to love listening to the falling rain as he lay in bed at night, warm and comfortable, but loved best the sound of the wind as it flowed up the grass of the Marsh, sighing louder and louder until it was no longer sighing but rather roaring, and then fading and fading until it died away entirely, only to begin again. 

Autumn ebbed. The grasses were all brown and faded. The geese began to fly overhead, night after night of them, and as Beric sat with Justinius before the hearth fire, they listened together to the wild cries intermixed with the sounds of the wind and the rain. Beric felt contented then, so strong his body could hardly hold the feeling. 

His eyes closed on those nights of their own accord, and he thought of Jason with an almost desperate longing, that he would have lived, that they could have shared this life, this place together. 

Although the work of Wall-building did not allow much time for idle moments, Jason’s face sometimes appeared before his eyes there too. Perhaps it was because there was little time for rest. It was hard and muddy work, and Beric, even young and strong as he was, often felt exhausted to the point of pain after only a few hours of it. He hated the feeling of weakness that would rise up in him and worked the harder to mask it over. 

When Jason’s face appeared to him there, the inside of his head filled with a buzzing noise, and there was a pain in his chest that he could not account for. He felt as though he were back on the galley, except this time it was only the cacophony in his own mind that drove him onward, sharper than whips. 

Justinius caught him at one of those times, wavering in the mud as though he were about to fall, lifting stones into position without seeing where they were being placed. He laid a hand on Beric’s shoulder. “Put that down,” he said. “Come with me.” 

Beric followed like a man dazed with sun. Justinius led him to the shade of a nearby tree and Beric leaned against it, panting desperately. Justinius said no more, but laid a hand on his shoulder and then softly against his forehead as though testing for fever, and the ache inside Beric began to ease, little by little. 

“You were dreaming that you were again a slave, were you not?” Justinius asked at last. “I have seen it before. The eyes of a man who has endured great hardship may become clouded over with memory at times.” 

Beric sighed. “I thought - I do not know what I thought. I wished to drive myself onward but I lost myself in the attempt and I was back again in the galley.” 

“It is sometimes so,” Justinius said, placing a hand on Beric’s arm. “Do not distress yourself overmuch by it, but take the time to catch your breath rather than push yourself harder and faster.” 

Beric looked back out at the Wall, where the men laboured. “There is a spirit in me at such times that drives me onward whether I will or no. I feel that I cannot stop or something terrible will happen.” 

“But here you have stopped,” Justinius said with a smile, “and it is not so ill, is it?” 

Beric drew in a breath. “No,” he said, “but I did not stop, you stopped me.” He stood silent for a moment, eyes downcast. “I would that I could be as I was, before I was a slave, when my heart was ready to take on all the world,” he said at last. “I have lost more than years, I fear, I have lost the heart that was in me.” He looked up at Justinius. “And that is one reason why you will not have a son to take up your old service.” 

Justinius laid his arm around Beric’s shoulders and drew him close. “I do not regret it,” he said softly. “I am glad to keep you here.” 

Beric took a breath. “Part of me regrets it,” he said. “I feel as though I am all in fragments, that I have been shattered like a wine-cup and scattered from here to Rome and back again. Will I ever feel whole again?” He felt tears welling up and, horrified at his own weakness, brought his hands to cover his face, stepping away from Justinius. 

Justinius followed him, gently laying a hand on his bent head. “You will,” he said. 

“How do you know?” Beric’s voice, behind his hands, was muffled. He slowly took his hands away from his face and turned to face Justinius. 

“Even so I felt when I lost my wife and my son. But time has healed their loss. Our hearts do always grieve in part for those we love who have gone from us, but patience, my son, patience, and the wound will not ache so sharp.” 

Justinius smiled a wry smile. “You are too young yet to know how it feels but I have pains from old wounds that I only feel in a cold wind. It is the same with the pain of old loss. At times it will stab you again, but it is only an echo. Do not let it rule you. The past is done, Beric, and it cannot be changed.”

He patted Beric on the shoulder. “I spoke of a cold wind,” he said, shivering a bit for effect. “Come you, it is time you and I, and the men, found a fire. The nights begin to draw in early now, and, look, there is a fair sunset.” 

Beric looked up at the clouds alight with pink and orange light. The ache in his breast had faded and his mind was quiet again. Overhead a flight of geese cried out, and Beric found himself smiling. 

“Jason would have made a fine fresco of this,” he said, more to himself than to Justinius, and knew that Jason’s face would visit him no more as he was building the Wall but only when he wished it, in front of the fire with the geese crying overhead. That was a fitting place for a memory to reside and for old aches and pains to fade.


End file.
